


The Scientific Method of Life and Death

by RoyalSeal



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 00:43:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2831945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoyalSeal/pseuds/RoyalSeal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's been struck by lightning, now he's lost in a world of darkness, alone except for a voice that keeps calling his name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Scientific Method of Life and Death

It's twenty minutes for him. Twenty minutes of existing all by himself, hardly even breathing, in darkness and loneliness.

At least it's not cold, anyway.

In fact, it's really quite a pleasant temperature to be all by yourself in. 

The seconds tick by while he takes stock of what happened to him. To keep himself steady, he says out loud, "I saw an explosion. I heard thunder and saw flashes. I went to the chain on the skylight. I started to...there was liquid floating everywhere? Am I nuts? I don't know. There was a big flash and I got shocked by..." He pauses. Blinks. "I think...I think I got hit by lightning."

He considers this.

"Huh. Cool."

He taps a foot pensively on...well, he's not sure what he's tapping it against, but his sneaker is squeaking away, so he doesn't care much to investigate. It feels natural enough.

"Maybe I'm dead." He says. That's ominous. But it's definitely worth considering. A bolt of lightning has approximately one billion joules of energy in it, and though he's never been struck by lightning before, he's pretty certain that the one bolt that hit him was not usual, as he was certain it was red and yellow, rather than the typical white and small amount of blue. 

He's very tired.

He shakes his head. He's a scientist; he knows better than to just make stupid assumptions based on emotions and what he  _thought_  he might have seen. 

"Barry, you idiot, work this out the way you know how to." He mutters to himself, and shifts to a rested kneeling position. He doesn't seem to be on the floor, but rather suspended in a solid kind of space. 

If this were relevant, he might have been terrified, but since he's a little preoccupied by whether he's  _dead_  or not, he compartmentalizes that information for later.

"H'okayyyyyy..." He breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth, the way his therapist taught him when he was eleven. He forces himself to focus and do what he would do when dealing with any other scientific difficulty.

_Step 1. Formulate a Question._

As though he were dictating for a case, he recites mechanically, "Barry Allen, assistant forensic scientist for the CCPD. I will be attempting to answer an important question via the scientific method, and that question is...am I dead."

It doesn't come out sounding like a question, more of a  _please let me get an answer of 'false',_ but it'll do. He swallows, and opens his eyes.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

_Step 2. State the problem_.

That's almost unnecessary, but he gives it a shot anyway. "I'm stuck on my own in a strange place that would give even Dante the creeps...though I'm thinking Oliver Queen might like it, he likes shadows, aaaaannndd...I need to get out. Get home. If I can. I hope I can. Mm." He coughs. _Stop thinking Barry,_ he tells himself sternly.  _Just keep working._

_Step 3. Research._

"Background research is tricky, as all I can do currently is compile the evidence of my senses, but I saw a flash of intense light following a severe thunderstorm, all while I was holding a piece of metal. I also felt painful burning, as well as a sensation of electrical shock. I..."

_"Barry."_

He starts.

"Hello?"

He knows the voice that called him. He knows the name. He knows...he knows...

He's not sure he  _does_  know. He's very tired and would like to be left alone now. His eyes start to close, and he feels his head start to sag to the left. It's a comforting feeling, letting himself fall trustingly into the darkness around him.

_"Barry, please don't leave me_."

He catches his breath and opens his eyes. "That was dumb." He says, voice shaking, with a short, nervous laugh. "Kinda...trying to answer the most important question of my life here. H'okaaaaaayyy...step four."

_Step four. Make a hypothesis._

"This is easily the scariest hypothesis I've made in my life...I mean, well, not my  _life_ , but..." He breathes . There's a stinging behind his eyes, a thick lump in his throat, and a cold feeling in his chest as he says quietly, "I think...I'm dead."

There's a sudden rush of pain in his chest, but it seems so distant, so far away, he can't even register it. Something's making a drawn out beeping noises, but he's so sleepy it hardly fazes him. His eyelids droop again. The darkness surrounding him is far warmer than he had originally thought.

_"Barry don't you dare. You aren't allowed...don't you dare! Barry!"_

Well, whoever is calling his name clearly isn't going to shut up, and he has an important question to answer scientifically. With a sigh, he shakes off the sleepy feeling yet again and gets back to work. 

_Step five. Experiment._

"HOW?!" He yells into the darkness. He growls and digs his fingers through his hair in anger. He jumps to his feet. "HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO WORK OUT THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IF I CAN'T EXPERIMENT ON ANYTHING???" He makes a futile kick in the darkness and yells out his frustration until he thinks he might be sick. He takes some time to breathe, then sinks down onto the ground (or what there is of it), and lays his head back in an attempt to think. 

At least that drawn out beeping noise is gone. His chest feels better now too. "Well that's something, at least." He runs his hands over his face and tries to  _think_. How does one experiment whether one is dead?

He rolls his eyes, a little disgusted with himself. "Mom would be so disappointed, Barry. You take your _pulse._ Seriously though, how did I ever graduate?"

The beeping noise is back, but he tries to ignore it, despite the fact that its buzzing makes his head feel puffed up and numb. He reaches the fingers of his left hand up to his carotid artery on his neck and presses gently. 

He had done this many times after his mother had died; lying there in the darkness of a strange bedroom, checking his pulse to see if he was dead yet. That had been why he'd gone to see a therapist. It had taken time, but he'd learned to love life again, with the unbridled intensity of an eleven year old child. That zest for living has stayed with him for so long now, he hasn't felt the need to check his pulse in years. 

His hand comes away from his throat slowly. Fourteen years ago, he had wished for _week_ s that his heart would stop, but it never had. For thirteen years he had been grateful that it hadn't given up on him.

Until now.

_"Barry for the love of GOD._ "

His body suddenly tightens and convulses. He winces in pain, then sighs in relief as all his muscles and joints suddenly relax. The beeping is gone, but he's sore all over, and exhausted as though he's been up for days. He's all alone in an existence of darkness, disembodied voices, beeping noises, oh, and he's probably  _dead_ , so what's stopping him taking a nap?

Something soft and warm touches his hand. It makes him open his eyes a little, but not for long, and he barely has the energy to wonder who (or what) is touching him. 

"Like just...five minutes, okay." He mumbles sleepily to the touch, but he hears something now, and despite the fact that his eyes are almost completely closed, he strains to listen.

Barry's no expert on human emotion or noises, but he's heard enough of quiet, deeply heartfelt crying to know the sound almost instantly. It's gut wrenching and hauntingly beautiful, and though he's falling asleep, he forces himself awake just enough to register what he's hearing.

_"You...you can go if you need to, Barry. It's okay. You know how Dad said sometimes it was best to run rather than fight? Maybe...maybe it's okay...it's okay for you to stop fighting now."_

He wants to reach out his hand, to grip the hand of the person speaking to him ( _I know this person I know the person I know the voice who IS IT_???) but his body is in the deepest grip of the exhausted feeling that's running its poisonous way through him. He feels locked inside his own body, knowing what he wants it to do, but unable to force a signal through his nervous system to command his own limbs. He wants to scream and cry out in frustration, but even his own mouth has betrayed him. 

_"I love you, Bear."_

Bear. He knows that. He knows that nickname. It's his, isn't it? Bear is his nickname it's short for Barry which is short for Bartholomew which is  _his_  name but only two people in the world call him Bear and they aren't his parents because Barry Allen's mother was murdered and his father is incarcerated in Iron Heights for her murder and Barry Allen was taken in by Detective Joe West and...

_Iris._

The sensation of feeling her name brings is like electricity coursing its way through him all over again. With a superhuman effort, he twitches his fingers.

It  _drains_  him, that simple movement, but he knows he has to keep going. He rests when he needs to, but he has to keep finding ways to wiggle his body back from its frozen, locked position. He concentrates on certain portions of his body, forcing all of his will on them until they wiggle or twitch, and then he moves on to the next. He's exhausted and sore, but he forces himself to keep going. He can't go to sleep now, he needs to get to _Iris_ (remembering her name is an energizing thrill). He needs to hold Iris' hand, to wipe away her tears, to tell her it's okay, that he's okay, that everything's going to be alright.  _  
_

He needs to tell her he loves her.

His joints loosen.

She said he could stop fighting. So he does. Now he needs to run.

_Step six. Draw conclusion._

In a voice that's dry and rusty with disuse, he manages, "Despite...all...evidence.." (His hands flex) "...to the contrary..." (His feet jerk slightly, his legs with them) "My hypothesis..." (His neck makes the smallest of rolls) "...was incorrect."

_I'm not dead._

He breathes in and swallows. Some sort of tube is in his nose, and a constant, steady beeping noise ( _like a heart monitor?)_ is ringing in his ears. It's incredibly bothersome, but he forces himself to concentrate.

_In the nose, and out the mouth._

Someone's playing Lady Gaga. He dimly thinks that he likes this song. Voices above him are discussing Facebook pages. 

Barry opens his eyes.


End file.
